Validity and Interrater Reliability of the Visual Quarter-Waste Method for Assessing Food Waste in Middle School and High School Cafeteria Settings

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Acad Nutr Diet
• Personal Author:
  Getts, Katherine M. ; Quinn, Emilee L. ; Johnson, Donna B. ; Otten, Jennifer J.
• Description:
  Background
  
  Measuring food waste (ie, plate waste) in school cafeterias is an important tool to evaluate the effectiveness of school nutrition policies and interventions aimed at increasing consumption of healthier meals. Visual assessment methods are frequently applied in plate waste studies because they are more convenient than weighing. The visual quarter-waste method has become a common tool in studies of school meal waste and consumption, but previous studies of its validity and reliability have used correlation coefficients, which measure association but not necessarily agreement.
  
  Objective
  
  The aims of this study were to determine, using a statistic measuring interrater agreement, whether the visual quarter-waste method is valid and reliable for assessing food waste in a school cafeteria setting when compared with the gold standard of weighed plate waste.
  
  Methods
  
  To evaluate validity, researchers used the visual quarter-waste method and weighed food waste from 748 trays at four middle schools ànd five high schools in one school district in Washington State during May 2014. To assess interrater reliability, researcher pairs independently assessed 59 of the same trays using the visual quarter-waste method. Both validity and reliability were assessed using a weighted κ coefficient.
  
  Results
  
  For validity, as compared with the measured weight, 45% of foods assessed using the visual quarter-waste method were in almost perfect agreement, 42% of foods were in substantial agreement, 10% were in moderate agreement, and 3% were in slight agreement. For interrater reliability between pairs of visual assessors, 46% of foods were in perfect agreement, 31% were in almost perfect agreement, 15% were in substantial agreement, and 8% were in moderate agreement.
  
  Conclusions
  
  These results suggest that the visual quarter-waste method is a valid and reliable tool for measuring plate waste in school cafeteria settings.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Adolescent Child Feeding Behavior Food Food Preferences Food Services Humans Lunch Nutrition Policy Observer Variation Program Evaluation Reproducibility Of Results Schools Vision, Ocular Washington Waste Products Weights And Measures

  More +
• Keywords:
  Food Waste Plate Waste Reliability School Nutrition Validity
• Source:
  J Acad Nutr Diet. 117(11):1816-1821
• Pubmed ID:
  28688883
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC7261231
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  H75 DP004595/DP/NCCDPHP CDC HHSUnited States/ ; P2C HD042828/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  117
• Issue:
  11
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:cbda8a9437a693c9faa540bd6e09442fee5907eec7340cdb82fbc0c19851bd36
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/88934/cdc_88934_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 321.67 KB ]